Becoming a Disney Travel Agent
About This Page: This is a discussion on Becoming a Disney Travel Agent within the Ask the Travel Agents: Your Q&A, part of the PassPorter Community - Boards & Forums on Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel; I am interested in becoming a travel agent that specializes in Disney Vacations. We travel to Disney often. All my ...

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I am interested in becoming a travel agent that specializes in Disney Vacations. We travel to Disney often. All my friends come to me for advice. I help with their resort choices, dining choices and putting together an itinerary. I would love to do this for a living and make some extra money. I am a stay at home mom whose children are in school all day. I would like to work for myself or out of my home. Any advice on where to begin? What classes to take? Any help is very much appreciated.

It's not hard to become a home-based agent but there are questions and decisions that you will have to make. What type of agent: booking or referral? To use a host agency or not? Will you need specialized training or courses?

The work can be sporadic and frustrating yet equally rewarding, both financially and personally. It may take time to establish a client base so it helps to go into it with your eyes wide open as to the limitations (and potential) to this type of work.

I'm going to second everything Lynn has to say about Kelly. His books are top notch and the Desk Reference is always close at hand. In addition, I'd recommend the books by Tom and Joanie Ogg (Home Based Travel Agent Information Center).

There's more to selling travel than just knowing the destination, although that's an important part of it. It's a business, and you have to treat it as one.

I would recommend taking Disney's course work. I would also recommend taking several of the CLIA courses. They have courses that teach you about valuable skills such as telephone sales and groups.

To become a Disney Travel Agent you should also take the free Disney classes they offer online. These are Disney's College of Knowledge training classes. You must be a travel agency or join a travel agency to get access to these training classes.

The Disney College of Knowledge classes will teach you about Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line and Adventures by Disney as well as their reservation system. They also have additional classes and a great deal more information at this site. You also "earn your ears" and will get some very cool Mickey ears when you graduate. Don't worry, you can take the classes at your own pace and you can retake the online tests. It's about 7 hours to do all the classes, and you can split this up over time.

Joining a travel agency " a Host Agency" allows you to get access. I would look at travel agencies that specialize in Disney vacations. Find out what they charge to join, what training other than the Disney's College of Knowledge they offer, what support they offer, commissions they pay, etc.

Lisa and I love Disney and that is why we got started planning guest vacations. We started off as cast members at Walt Disney World in our college years and worked at Disney World for many many years. It's so much fun.